Haile Selassie

Africa’s mineral wealth is great; we should co-operate in its development.

Thousands of years ago, civilizations flourished in Africa which suffer not at all by comparison with those of other continents. In those centuries, Africans were politically free and economically independent. Their social patterns were their own and their cultures truly indigenous.

We have finished the job, what shall we do with the tools?

We all wish to live. We all seek a world in which men are freed of the burdens of ignorance, poverty, hunger and disease. And we shall all be hard-pressed to escape the deadly rain of nuclear fall-out should catastrophe overtake us.

The preservation of peace and the guaranteeing of man’s basic freedoms and rights require courage and eternal vigilance: courage to speak and act – and if necessary, to suffer and die – for truth and justice; eternal vigilance, that the least transgression of international morality shall not go undetected and unremedied.

I have lived too long to cherish many illusions about the essential high-mindedness of men when brought into stark confrontation with the issue of control over their security, and their property interests.

I was kosher until I had my Bar Mitzvah, and I parlayed officially becoming a man into telling my father I wanted to eat cheeseburgers.

One who conquers himself is greater than another who conquers a thousand times a thousand on the battlefield.

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength while loving someone deeply gives you courage.

To understand everything is to forgive everything.

To follow the path, look to the master, follow the master, walk with the master, see through the master, become the master.

When the student is ready the teacher will appear.

I have a habit of running from the things I’ve prayed for and then asking God to send them again.

Thou shalt not commit adultry is a command which makes no distinction between the following persons. They are all required to obey it: children at birth. Children in the cradle. School children. Youths and maidens. Fresh adults. Older ones. Men and women of 40. Of 50. Of 60. Of 70. Of 80. Of 100. The command does not distribute its burden equally, and cannot. It is not hard upon the three sets of children.

Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.

The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass.

Still water has no mind to receive the image of the migrating geese.

The Kingdom of God is Within You,

You’re just left with yourself all the time, whatever you do anyway. You’ve got to get down to your own God in your own temple. It’s all down to you, mate.

Live happily in the present moment. It is the only moment we have.

In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.